In the Shadow of the Yali

by Suat Dervis

  When he realized that Muhsin was not going to answer him, Ahmet began to cry harder still.

  Like some demented woman…

  This crying continued for another quarter hour. A half hour at most. Then the sobs became less frequent. When Ahmet had at last stopped crying, he sat in silence for a time, his head buried in his hands. Then he dropped his hands and moaned: “Muhsin Bey. I want to see Celile one more time. I want her to speak with me one more time, before she makes her final decision. You’ll tell her this, won’t you? Before it’s definite. Before our lawyers speak…”

  “I’ll pass that on to Celile,” Muhsin said. You have my word.” Then he added, “But she will be the one to decide.”

  FOURTEEN

  Celile had made her decision clear by spending the night with her love.

  What difference did it make if she saw Ahmet again or not?

  Whatever she decided, it would make no difference, Muhsin told himself. The die was cast.

  Even so, he left the office in a state.

  What if Celile had gone home? He knew he would be in torment until he was back in his apartment, sleeping peacefully in his bed. How relieved he’d been when he got back and found her still there.

  He crept out of the bedroom and stretched out on the sofa in the anteroom, quietly, so as not to wake her.

  He lit up one cigarette, and then another.

  His nerves were shot. His conversation with Ahmet had not been a success. Ahmet was ready to make any amount of mischief.

  He could see what was ahead, and it troubled him deeply.

  One thing was sure: he would never sit in the same room with this man again.

  But first things first. First he needed to talk to Celile and pass on Ahmet’s request.

  Celile was sleeping as deeply and peacefully as a child. No pangs of conscience disturbed her.

  As Ahmet had said—and he himself had so often thought—she was a terrifying woman.

  She had left her husband of ten years, and her home of ten years, without a moment of hesitation.

  She showed no signs of agitation.

  How peaceful her face looked, there in the bed. Just like a child’s.

  It was almost noon when he heard footsteps in the bedroom. Ten or fifteen minutes later, Celile appeared before him, hair brushed, makeup freshened, and back in her black velvet dress.

  Had she dressed to leave the house, he wondered?

  The thought filled Muhsin with dread. He couldn’t find the courage to say a thing.

  Calmly, she came to his side. Put her hand on his neck and looked deep into his eyes. Smiling, eyes shining, she murmured, “I’m so very happy!”

  It was true. She genuinely was. He could read it in her smile, her eyes, her everything.

  But still, Muhsin was slow to sit up. He studied her face.

  He couldn’t shake off Ahmet’s words. This woman terrified him.

  He picked up his gold cigarette box and offered her a cigarette. He lit up another cigarette for himself.

  In as natural a voice as he could muster, he said: “Celile. This morning I met with Ahmet.”

  It was almost as if she were trying to remember who Ahmet was. Her eyes remained blank.

  Muhsin continued: “I told him you weren’t going home again.”

  And Celile said, “You did the right thing!”

  “I’m feeling bad, though,” he added, “about taking this step without speaking to you first. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Because I thought you wouldn’t want to go back. But then I began to worry that I might have offended you.”

  “You did the right thing, Muhsin.”

  “But Ahmet refused to believe that I was speaking for you.”

  She might wish to speak to him herself, even if she had decided to leave him.

  “What need is there for that?” she said. “It would only bring more pain to us both.”

  “Are you sorry to leave him?”

  “Not at all, Muhsin. I just know I have done something terrible to him and caused him great misery.”

  “Then why are you leaving him?”

  “Because I love you!”

  “Celile, if we have decided to be together from now on, we need to get to know each other better.”

  “I don’t want to know you or understand you. I just want to love you.”

  “But I do want to understand you better. From today you are mine, and mine alone. And I do not want to think your soul is a labyrinth in which I might lose my way. I want to be able to see you clearly. I want to know who you are.”

  “I’m a woman, pure and simple, Muhsin. There is no woman on earth who is simpler than me!”

  “Drop that lying tone. You’re extraordinary—a woman like no other! I’m going to ask you a question. Promise me you’ll give me an honest answer.”

  “Don’t I always?”

  “Don’t you feel any compassion for Ahmet?”

  “Compassion?”

  She closed her eyes.

  “I know I have done a terrible thing to Ahmet. But I can’t help it. It would be like stopping the sun from rising. To give you up would be just as impossible. If I love you, how can I live with him? I should have left long ago. Why should we be sad about what could never be?”

  “Don’t you want to speak with him?”

  “No! He has to understand this. It’s been a very long time since he and I have had anything to talk about. He’s done everything in his power not to accept this. Would it be hard for me to see him in pain? I don’t know. All I know is that I couldn’t bear any begging or pleading. I don’t want to see him cry.”

  She wrapped her arms around Muhsin’s neck, the better to whisper into his ear.

  “If I met one last time with Ahmet, think how it would darken our memories of this happy morning. I don’t want to see the misery we have caused this man, now that we have achieved happiness.”

  “Celile, you terrify me.”

  “I am a helpless woman, Muhsin. Don’t fear me—fear love!”

  No, nothing was going to change Celile’s mind. Whether she saw Ahmet or not, she had decided to stay at her lover’s side.

  There was nothing left between her and Ahmet. And nothing to discuss.

  But Muhsin persisted.

  “The problem is that Ahmet doesn’t believe me. You need to write to him, tell him that you don’t want to see him.”

  Celile didn’t have a problem with writing a letter. So long as she didn’t have to see his miserable face and hangdog eyes. Far better to dash off a few words of farewell.

  Celile had great faith in Ahmet. He had loved her and he had cared for her. He had devoted his life to her—this she knew. It would be a terrible blow to lose her. But once he understood her—once he saw that her happiness depended on her being with Muhsin—he would find great consolation in knowing that Celile, at least, was happy.

  So she wrote to him.

  Ahmet,

  I understand that you have been informed of my decision, and that you didn’t believe it because it did not come from me personally. For months now I have been doing everything in my power to make it clear to you. But you have not wished to read my mood. You have refused to notice what I have tried so hard to tell you through my actions.

  It is no longer possible for us to be together. There is no need.

  I can no longer be yours.

  Throughout our marriage, we’ve been friends, but never more than friends. What need is there for us to be enemies now that our time together has ended?

  Why do you wish to see me? It would only bring us pain. It would distress us both, but most especially you.

  Don’t ask to see me again. Later, perhaps. Let a few years pass, and when you’re feeling calmer, I can explain everything.

  But seeing
you now would not change my decision. Whether we speak or not, I am not coming back.

  It is no longer possible. It is my hope that we can part as friends. In the meantime, I apologize for the sorrow and anguish I have caused you. I only ask that you try to understand me.

  Celile

  There was nothing in this letter on the practicalities. Nothing about a divorce, nothing about what to do with her possessions. She didn’t even ask for a suitcase to be sent over with a much-needed change of underwear and suchlike.

  Clearly this woman didn’t know the first thing about real life, and never would.

  She really was the child of that forty-room wooden yalı, cut off from the real world and floating in its own legend.

  Wherever she went she took with her that separate realm.

  Never joining the fray. Never leaving that realm she had created inside herself. Wherever she walked, she walked without direction, answering only to the flame in her heart.

  That flame was her guide.

  The letter she sent to her husband of ten years spoke only of emotions. Though she knew almost nothing about emotions beyond her own.

  She had no idea what she was doing. No idea that her actions would turn Ahmet into a laughingstock. No idea that she had, through the same actions, disgraced herself.

  She loved Muhsin.

  She wanted now to live with him, never to be parted.

  To live with the man she loved—that was the greatest happiness a woman could ever know. To make him happy—that would now be her most important duty.

  To devote her life to him, to live for him, sacrificing all else.

  Celile passed her letter to Muhsin in an unsealed envelope.

  “Here it is,” she said. “Ready for you to send.”

  “Excellent,” he said.

  She had given him the letter in an unsealed envelope to make it clear to him that there was no longer anything private between her and Ahmet.

  That was all.

  It seemed to her that a single private word to Ahmet would break her bond of trust with Muhsin.

  As he took the unsealed envelope, Muhsin could feel his heart pounding.

  He longed to take out the letter and read it, to see how these two addressed each other. It would, he thought, help him understand Celile a little better.

  But he held himself back, leaving the letter where it was and sealing the envelope right there.

  “I’ll go out and send this now, Celile. It’s much better, doing it like this.”

  FIFTEEN

  Ahmet read the letter, and then he read it again.

  But even after he had read it more times than he could count, he could not believe his eyes.

  It was definitely her handwriting. The fine scrawl he knew so well. And this was how he knew her to express herself—simply and directly, without artifice.

  This was how she had accepted his proposal of marriage. With the same simple words she was now bidding him farewell.

  As if she had no idea how grievously she’d wronged him. As if she had not even considered how much suffering she would cause him. No more than a bland announcement that she was not coming home. It is no longer possible for us to be together. There is no need.

  And then, her reproaches. She had told him but he had not wished to understand. Yes, it was true. Ahmet had not understood a thing. But now, as he cast his mind back over the last few months, he started seeing all the signs he’d previously ignored. First he saw them for what they were. Then he viewed them through the crazed eyes of a cuckold.

  How had he lost her? How had she slipped away from him?

  He cast his mind back further. He had worshipped this woman. He would have given his life for her. But she’d never been wholly his. She’d always kept her distance, always remained something of a stranger. This was the bitter truth.

  How he had admired her haughty gaze and her remote manner. How it had fed his passion, to look up and see her still beyond his grasp!

  But now he knew why he had never possessed her, and the pain was killing him.

  Was she right?

  He pondered this question. Deep inside, he knew she was right.

  What was there to love about him? What could a woman of her rank ever see in him?

  His streak of luck was over, then. He had been a little bank clerk. Then, with Muhsin’s help, he had risen in the world to join the ranks of the lesser entrepreneurs.

  And who had introduced Celile to Muhsin? Who had praised him to the skies? Who had told Celile night after night that just to know Muhsin, just to be on friendly terms with him, was a piece of luck that would change their lives forever?

  It had been Ahmet. And on the day Muhsin invited him into the office, he had said: “Just think, Celile. I’m even welcome in Muhsin’s office now. We’re going to talk about a proposition I’ve made him. Do you see how lucky I am? And not only that! If you’ll permit me to say so, I have brains!”

  Hadn’t he said that?

  There was Muhsin, trembling with love for Celile. And there was Celile, hoping that Muhsin would do favors for her husband. Didn’t it make more sense for her to go straight to Muhsin and turn him into her slave?

  Shameful as it might seem, he felt some pride in having Muhsin as his rival. At least his wife hadn’t deceived him with just anyone. She’d deceived him with Muhsin Demirtaş.

  In her letter she’d said he had refused to understand. And it was true. But now he understood everything. He had taken his picture of the past and picked it apart. He was rearranging the pieces to form new memories.

  And there he sat, reviewing those new memories, turning each one over to find yet more unwelcome truths to feed his jealousy.

  Hating life, hating love, hating everyone, especially himself.

  For many days he went home drunk.

  Often in the early hours of the morning.

  Home, for him, meant a return to hell.

  Because Celile was everywhere in this house. Their days of happiness. Their unmet hopes.

  And now—now she was gone, taking with her all happiness, all hope.

  In every room, on every surface, the things Celile had left behind.

  The maids had not touched them. Ahmet would wake them up at night and summon them.

  Some nights he would come home drunk and see Celile’s things and burst into tears.

  He lacked the strength to hide his grief. It would have been more dignified to suffer alone or in silence, but this was beyond him.

  “You know,” he told the maids. “You know how much I loved and spoiled her. How I looked into her eyes. The moment she asked for something, I brought it home and laid it at her feet. What was I—her husband? Her father? Her older brother? Even I didn’t know. And then look what happened. She ran off like a dog, and left me.”

  He didn’t stop with the maids.

  If he had, it would only have been a few janitors and other maids laughing at him, plus a few of the neighbors they’d confided in.

  But no. He took to sharing his woes with everyone he met.

  He had been seized by a morbid urge to tell one and all that his wife had betrayed him and run off to live with her lover.

  He kept going to see his parents, who of course wanted to help and comfort him. Over and over, he told this elderly couple the story of the night he’d been betrayed.

  He must have told them a thousand times.

  He also paid many visits to the home of Celile’s uncle. Celile’s cousins had been his friends since childhood.

  He did so because he wished to discuss Celile with those who knew her, but also, in part, to reproach them.

  If only he had kept it at that. But no, he also had to tell his sad story to every passing stranger. Everyone who visited his office came to know that he had been betrayed by his wife, and from Ahm
et’s own lips:

  “For ten years, she was my wife. I trusted her as I trusted my own eyes. She betrayed me. Can you guess who it was? It was one of my best, my closest friends. You probably know him. Who does not know this man? His name commands universal respect! We trusted this honorable gentleman. We invited him to our home. And we were so proud to have him as our guest, and so uncertain of our position, that we wanted all our neighbors to join us, knowing how impressed they’d be, and how jealous.

  “Yes, the man who seduced my wife, seduced her and took her away, disgracing and dishonoring—this was how he was. So I think that by now you’ve guessed who he is. None other than Muhsin Demirtaş! Can you believe it? You had better believe it, because it’s true. That’s what men like him are like. They’ll do anything. Nothing gets in their way…”

  Was it not the same mad urge that prompted him to turn up unannounced on Nuri and Müjde’s doorstep at nine o’clock one evening—even though he had never visited them before?

  For hours he moaned and groaned. “They’ve robbed me of my dignity,” he told them. “And now they get in touch to arrange an amicable divorce? I’m not agreeing to that. How could that even be possible? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. I’m sending in the police, to catch them in the act. I’m taking them to court. The law is on my side. I’m insisting on my rights, and throwing the two of them in jail. What good are his millions, in the eyes of the law? Let us see. They’ve disgraced me. So now watch me, while I do the same to them.”

  He said all this, but he had yet to go to his lawyer, let alone contact the police.

  A man calling himself Celile’s lawyer had called him twice, asking for a meeting with his lawyer or his good self.

  On both occasions, Ahmet had said, “I’m not divorcing, not until I have disgraced them in the eyes of the entire world.”

  With that, he had slammed down the phone.

  He was swimming in dreams of revenge. But he lacked the energy to do more than sit in his chair complaining.

  In truth, he had no idea what to do. He’d become an opium addict deprived of opium, writhing in the agony of withdrawal.